“You might say I am extravagant for using 20 trillion bottles of Fiji water every day to make snow for my ski resort in the middle of the desert,” said Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as the fictitious dictator Gen. Shabazz Aladeen of the made-up Republic of Wadiya. “But am I the person who greenlit ‘John Carter?’”

The British comedian, known for his previous films “Borat” and “Bruno,” as well as “Da Ali G Show,” was in New York on Monday to promote his new movie “The Dictator,” which hits theaters on May 16. After appearing in character on NBC’s “Today”—he told Matt Lauer that he had kidnapped his wife–Mr. Baron Cohen and his Wadiyan delegation headed over to the Waldorf-Astoria, where they hosted a press conference for “the devils of the Zionist media,” as Gen. Aladeen described the assembled crowd.

Mr. Baron Cohen, whose Aladeen character can be viewed as a hybrid of Kim Jong-il, Moammar Ghadafi, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—with other assorted tyrants mixed in—professed his admiration for fashion designer John Galliano who was fined last year for making anti-Semitic comments, and declared that Mel Gibson was named “the head of our Museum of Intolerance.” He said if he was American, he would have supported Sen. Rick Santorum in his bid for the presidency “despite his liberal views.”

For more zingers from Mr. Baron Cohen’s press conference watch the clip below:

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